Throughout a six-decade career that spans masterpieces like Il Posto and The Tree of Wooden Clogs, Ermanno Olmi has earned the title “Poet of Silence.” With measured pacing and sparse dialogue, Olmi crafts films that are hypnotizing in their patient alertness. At age 83, he turns his attention to the First World War. But instead of making a combat film, he chooses to capture a single snowy night on the Italian front, as soldiers burrowed in trenches confront their loneliness and find pockets of hope where they can. Reminiscent of Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line in its ethereality and focus on inner thoughts, Olmi’s haunting meditation features actual World War I footage and is dedicated to the director’s father, who told him tales of the war when he was a child.